Sophie Platt, writing for The F Word, has an irritating but valuable article here.

Irritating because it is filled with typical vindictive puerility:

I would love for them to turn the tables round one night and end a sexual encounter before their partners had come. A friend of mine tried this once, and reported that the incensed rage and sulking that followed could only be likened to that of a three-year-old who has been told Christmas had been cancelled.

Also due to the prejudiced, sourceless bigotry that somehow imagines that an Austen reference that was long ago faded through overuse constitutes a valid substitute for anything beyond the most meagre of anecdotal evidence:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that teenage boys on the whole are more concerned with their own satisfaction than that of their partners

Let’s see if I can give this a go: It is a truth universally acknowledged that Afro-Caribbean men care more about stealing car stereos than raising their bastard children. Does that sound in any way acceptable to everyone? No matter, I shall just generate a false consensus in lieu of an adequete proof and make pretence that my view is that of the entirity of universe denizens. Does this not make a refreshing change from the mainstream press and its ceaseless distortions?

Furthermore her phallus obsession is seemingly total, as well as less than benign:

It’s just that so many are made to look like a penis, some disturbingly realistic, that they seem rather sinister as a tool for us to become better acquainted with our own bodies.

Where to begin with this? Is she stating that she finds real phalluses realistic? Or is it the prospect of women using items which resemble the organ used for the act that they are stimulating with it that unsettles her? Is it really appropriate and wise to label the sexual predilections of others “sinister” in such an article? Or any article? Is it in pointing out her failure to mention the rise of the “Fleshlight” devices for men that are now plastered all over the internet?

More harmfully still she has made a deep error in her analysis of “Raunch Culture”. Platt attempts to stage a forced division, of sorts, between the elements she truly disapproves of (lap-dancing legality, pole-dancing lessons, girls wearing mini-skirts and so on) from those she can not help but muster begrudging respect for (the popularity of a programme revolving around the sex lives of a set of vapid egoist females, the mass marketing and cultural strength of an item designed purely to bring women vast amounts of pleasure, vibrators on sale at Boots).

Such a dichotomy quite simply does not exist.

Both sets of phenomenon are part of a cultural motion away from the moralistic confines of the past and towards a state of personal liberty to pursue physical pleasure via carnal means. They are not divisible and any efforts to consider them along some form of “Pro” and “Anti” patriarchy lines is bound for failure, as are all other strictly partisan assessments. Women pleasuring themselves and feeling no shame and men resorting to bandwidth over charm and discussing without generating horror their nights at lap-dancing clubs are not in the slightest phenomenon which can be held apart. Their origins are precisely the same: formerly residual Christian morality dominated Britain’s views of carnal union, but since this is rapidly disintegrating people are beginning to act far more as they please and are in acceptance of far less restraints or restrictive mores. To divide this tendency into two separate paragraphs and imagine that it can somehow be split apart is the height of foolishness: they are simply differing manifestations within near identical circumstances. But Platt becomes wound up in her tiresomely hackneyed depiction of Raunch Culture:

it has become about appearing to be sexual available simply to please men and not to fulfil their own desires or fantasies.

The rise of so-called ‘raunch culture’ means that for many girls, merely looking ‘pretty’ has taken a back seat for looking ‘sexy’: supermarkets stock pole dancing kits as children’s toys, glamour modelling is in the top five career choices for pre-teen girls and hundreds of girls all over the country are counting the days until they are 18 and are legally allowed breast enhancements. Girls are being sexualised at an increasingly younger age, and it seems to be more about self-esteem than sexual satisfaction. The pleasure that comes from sexual experiences at this age is often the feeling of being thought attractive and being desired by a male than actually getting off.

Has she no conception of the positive effects of banishing shame in exposing more flesh than our present 1950s hang-over hegemony permits? Is she unaware that the frequency of exibitionism has always matched voyeurism? Obviously not: it is required that all shifts be made somehow in favour of the Patriarchy. Thus pole dancing kits suddenly are related to skimpier outfits for young women and are entirely unrelated to alterations that increase women’s pleasure.

As flawed a view as this unquestionably is this article is valauble because Platt has hit the nub of this issue: it is simply not expected of girls that they will entertain themselves, while with boys only (fittingly paired) certain fundamentalist Christians and some extremist feminists would argue otherwise. This is a strange and harmful double standard, in that it denies half of the population the assumption that it is correct to pursue their personal pleasure. The consequences are young (and occasionally even elderly) women who have never experienced an orgasm, a highly unfortunate state of affairs that leaves the men in a strong lead.

It would seem that Platt, then, is excellent at identifying the problem before us but fails in terms of solution. She, for instance, disparrages the shift that has eradicated the near total silence on matters of female pleasuring that reigned previously, through her offensive against the surgingly popular sex toys, now sold by a variety of mainstream stores and chains. For how can something remain a taboo when it is upon the evening news? Having the act she fears girls are not expected to participate in directly alluded to on chemists shelves is surely going to break the culture which she outlines.

The silence is thus effectively already breached.

Time for some “militant secularism”; another shredding of faith schools, I feel. Observe the latest obscurantist wail from their defenders:

Selective, divisive, a law unto themselves: faith schools have been depicted by Ed Balls, secretary of state for schools, families and children, as a danger to Britain’s 9.8 million school-age children. Balls made his allegations last March, and has commissioned Sir Philip Hunter, the chief schools adjudicator, to investigate the 7000 faith schools in England and Wales. Hunter’s report is scheduled to reach ministers in September – and will, once again, stir up the row over faith schools.

Ball’s charges against faith schools can be dismissed one by one.

Really? They seem justified to me. Faith schools ground pupils in a seperate religious community, and so are divisive; they virtually require pupils to hold that faith, and so are selective; and raise hell (hah…) whenever the state which funds them imposes the same controls as it does on other schools it funds. Selective, divisive and a law unto themselves? Just a bit.

But, let’s hear what Ms. Odone has to say:

The schools do not select middle-class pupils or reject troubled ones. The intake of Christian schools reflects a broader ethnic range than comprehensive schools in the same area.

Class and race are synonymous? Look, we all enjoy a decent non-sequitur now and then, but to cite one phenomena and cite evidence (strangely without validated statistics) from another defeats itself. Balls’ point isn’t even addressed, save with unsupported assertion - so it isn’t addressed.

Moving on:

The schools are not divisive. Fully 76 of the 77 British citizens convicted under the Terrorism Act of 2000 attended a secular state school; the exception was home-schooled.

And this is meant to be serious journalism? When an author manages two complete non-sequiturs in 6 sentences, they need to be denied the oxygen of publicity. It doesn’t matter how many citizens arrested under the Terrorism Act attended secular schools; that’s simply not the point.

Faith schools are inherently divisive. They encourage pupils to conform to the tenets of a certain religion and inculcate a sense of community with others of that religion; they thus perpetuate faith communities. These faith communities are seperate and frequently opposed to each other. In a word, they’re divided - and faith schools perpetuate this. So, actually, it’s got nothing to do with arrests under the Terrorism Act of 2000 and more to do with the socio-cultural implications of telling a child they’re different to other children because of what’s written in an ancient tome.

But there’s more:

Faith schools do not charge parents for places. Although some schools did ask for voluntary contributions from parents even before admission, these pay for extra teaching for religious studies and, in the case of Jewish schools, for protection.

So, what you’re saying is that they do charge parents money and so exclude low-income families? A “voluntary contribution” before admissions sounds suspiciously like one on which admission could hang. Nothing would need said; the very fact that the charge comes before admission would simply worry parents, who then pay out just in case something goes wrong with the application goes through.

Not that those charges would be necessary in a secular school anyway; surely, “protection” money is required because of the school’s very insularity? The group seperates itself off from the community; that community is left in ignorance of that group’s traditions and finds it harder to challenge prejudices; the prejudiced, meanwhile, have an easy target in the isolated group. They’re not asking for it - but they’re hardly making the problem better.

Ed Balls’s attack fed, and amplified, the strident secularist stereotyping of faith schools as ghettoes that teach a backward mentality.

Let’s check a popular definition of the term, “Ghetto”: “a part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group.” Substitute, “education system,” for, “city, especially a slum area,” and, actually, that’s about right. A faith school sets itself up as a seperate entity within the state education system justifying its existence by its religious status - an educational ghetto.

In fact, Labour’s own Commission on Integration and Cohesion found that faith schools support local communities in terms of sharing their resources, and generating social capital.

Note the strange jargon to confuse the uninitiated; “social capital,” is an evasive non-phrase straight out of a sociology textbook. The author again misses the point; the schools might support their own, local communities, but their perpetuation of an insular, religious mentality seperates them from the national community (such as it is) and so is divisive.

Moreover, faith schools are crucial in the emancipation of Muslim girls: those who attend Muslim schools are more than twice as likely to go on to higher education than those who attend secular state or independent schools.

Perhaps more importantly, they’re more than twice as likely to have the doctrines of a religion elements of which treat women as second-class citizens forced on them. As they would do with a Christian or Jewish school; the patriarchal elements of Abrahamic faiths are inescapable.

Very emancipating.

As for the urban myth that faith schools teach creationism in science classes, this is precisely indeed a myth.

Now this just needs editting; “precisely indeed”? Ugh…

Faith schools have an excellent academic record, serve their local communities, and ground their students in a religious as well as national identity. Why squander this force for good?

Because they ground their students in a religious identity, and because that grounding is tax-funded. Parents have the right to educate their children as they wish, so long as that doesn’t harm the child; but they don’t have the right to do so on other taxpayers. All parents fund the education system. That system should thus be open to the children of any parent at any point, regardless of faith. That requires universally secular state schools; that requires an end to state funding for faith schools. Simple, really.

Oh - and since when was a religious and national identity a force for good? Division is the word she’s looking for.

For Ed Balls – and Gordon Brown – the answer is obvious: to woo the “old Labour” rump of the party, equally committed to secularism and comprehensive education.

Or maybe it’s because they believe in an open and fair education for all children?

With an eye to the No 10 succession, Balls is setting himself up as the old Labour candidate by bashing faith schools.

This is just laughable. Balls is setting himself up as Old Labour - by bashing faith schools? Odone could at least do the scaremongering properly and realise that the Labour left aren’t very well disposed to Balls because of City Academies and more. They care about socialism as well as secularism.

He deserves to fail.

Oh, look, another unsubstantiated point. Typical, no?

City Hall’s counter-propaganda over Rise found its way into Comment is Free today. BoJo’s cultural underling, Munira Mirza, claims that removing the anti-racist message means they’re now “Doing anti-racism for real.”

Really, Comrade Mirza? Let’s have a look at her argument:

To give some background: in 1996 the Trades Union Congress and various political groups organised Respect (later renamed Rise), intended as a festival against racism. One of the organisations involved was the National Assembly Against Racism (NAAR). In 2000, the then newly-elected Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, effectively nationalised the event by giving it large sums of public money. Several of Ken’s key aides at City Hall had links to NAAR, including Lee Jasper.

Do I detect the none-too-subtle presence of a strawman or five? Apparently, heavy state funding equals nationalisation. Which is strange, given that nationalisation is usually taken to mean state-ownership and direction of an event - not funding. The NHS is nationalised. The railway network, which receives heavy state subsidisation but is directed by private companies, is not. You’d hope that someone who held public office might know the difference, lest they attempt something risky like allowing vicious asset-strippers into the GLA for a period of public service (Oh. Wait…)

Or could it just possibly be that Mirza wants to associate Rise with nationalisation, and consequently with us bastard socialists? Nothing selective about her use of language, not at all…

Oh - and the same goes for her mention of Lee Jasper. The clear intent is to associate NAAR with Lee Jasper and thus with corruption, despite the rather glaring fact that NAAR isn’t under investigation for such.

Over the years, Rise was proclaimed by Ken & Co as a key weapon in the fight against racism and fascism. In reality, it became an annual jamboree for Ken’s favourite political activist groups, many with no clear link to anti-racism. The Cuba Solidarity Campaign, Socialist Workers Party and CND, among others, brought in their armies of volunteers to man stalls, hand out leaflets, sell newspapers and rattle donation buckets. The “community” area of the festival looked more like Sussex University freshers’ fair circa 1970. Not without good reason did Rise become known as “Kenstock“.

So, Mirza objects to the presence of political groups? Fine. Never mind the fact that those groups weren’t there because Ken asked them (perhaps she should ask the SWP for their views on Ken…), but because they wanted to be. Or that they’ve stalls at a host of other, entirely apolitical events, for much the same reason.

Oh, and the fact that most people simply ignore the stalls and wander straight off to the music - and have the choice to do so.

No, it’s clear that because Ken was a socialist, he allowed these groups in to peddle their pinko-peacenik ideologies on his behalf. Perhaps Mirza’s bitter because the RCP didn’t have a stall?

But, apparently, these bearded commies are a serious problem:

The deterrent effect of this highly politicised atmosphere should not be underestimated. Although the event was supposed to be inclusive and attract people from ethnic minorities, the GLA’s own research (conducted while Ken was mayor) shows that 65%-70% of attendees in the last two years were white. That is disproportionately whiter than the population of London.

Yes, very true. Unfortunately, Mirza then leaps to:

It seems reasonable to conclude that the political baggage and relentless sloganeering was actually putting people off. And no doubt many individuals and families who did come on the day were there primarily for the music or a nice day out.

No, it’s not reasonable to conclude that a few ill-attended stalls on the fringe of an event should drive down attendence by ethnic minorities. Where’s the evidence to suggest that? None. The GLA’s research did not report that potential concert-goers were put off because a few deranged Trotskyites might waggle their beards at them. There’s no evidence for that, or any other hypothesis as to why attendence isn’t very mixed - because the GLA didn’t ask.

It could easily be the previous choice of artists, or the weather in different part of London, or any number of factors. We can’t know, as we haven’t got anything to base our assertions off. But that hasn’t stopped Mirza…

Londoners deserve a great, free music festival with excellent bands from around the world. They don’t need to be hectored about why racism is bad or accosted by activists explaining why Castro is a hero. We don’t have anti-racist fireworks on New Year’s Eve and we don’t need to organise an anti-paedophile concert to prove our moral credentials on the issue.

Who mentioned paedophiles? Mirza looks to be playing games with language to make false associations again. Perhaps to compensate for her inability to make a consistent or logical argument. She’s entirely missed the point, here; Rise is, and always has been, about anti-racism. That’s why it exists. The concert is a means to communicate that message. The other groups that fund the event - particularly Unison and the TUC - know that and are committed to it.

If Mirza wants Londoners to have another free concert, then that’s great. But when she wants to cut the anti-racist elements out of an anti-racist festival with music attached - that’s not.

Sectarian political festivals are not the way Londoners want their money to be spent.

Anti-racism’s sectarian? The last person I heard make that argument was Richard Barnbrook.

Most of us, I suspect, just want to be trusted to get on with other people and not be instructed by activists about the dangers of racism.

Tell that to Barnbrook, and all of the 128 609 fascists who voted for him.

That’s why the GLA has decided to go ahead with Rise this summer, but to change the emphasis. We are stressing the cultural aspects of the festival and keeping the vibe positive. We are also bringing in grassroots ethnic and community organisations that have not previously been involved. Above all we are making Rise fun. As a result, the festival will hopefully attract a more diverse audience.

Let me translate that “keeping the vibe positive”: We’re going to ignore racism in public from now on. That’s what she means, as borne out by the total excision of Rise’s original purpose. And it won’t work. I hope Vamp won’t mind me quoting his original comment on this, but he has it exactly right:

Defeating racism is not purely a matter of dissuading those with such views but also mobilising those in opposition to it. I would refer you also to my write-up of Love Music Hate Racism: there is nothing more disastrous for the far-right than a gathering which loses them any of the young and I reckon that the sight, for instance, of Skream and Benga annihilating any notion of cross-racial incompatibility during their collaboration could well have such an impact. If you know of a better way to get a horde of youths together than a free music concert then be sure to let me know, as well as Richard Barnbrook who seems to have been struggling lately.

Mirza is absolutely correct that a concert is a great way of getting everyone together; that’s the original organisaers chose a concert in the first place. What she misses is that many are unaware of just how pervasive the problem is, and the fact that it needs challenged. Not everyone will come to the concert itself, mix with each other and solve the problem magically, as she wants - simply because not everyone will make it to the gig. It won’t have the desired effect.

But a festival combined with an anti-racist message will. Those who turn up will hopefully wake up to the danger of racism; they might become involved, and will certainly tell their friends. And so people become aware of racism, and something actually gets done.

Londoners voted for change on May 1 and the new Rise is part of that change. Out will go the political sloganeering and heavy-handed propaganda but by bringing Londoners from different backgrounds together to share their love of music Rise will be doing anti-racism for real.

She’s spelled those last two words wrong. What she means is we’re “doing anti-racism to death.” The original concerts brought people together and achieved the soft-power affect desired; the overt anti-racist message capitalised on that and actually drove the message home. The new festival will lack that extra impact, and so may well simply be wasted as an opportunity to challenge division and hate.

Perhaps turnout may be higher or more diverse this year. But that won’t be because the political message died, as Mirza suggests. Her assertion that this put people off was just that; an assertions with no reasonable basis. It’ll probably have more to do with the presence of truly excellent artists like CSS - or maybe just a decent weather forecast.

One thing’s for certain, though: it just won’t be the same.

EDIT: And, oh look! Barnbrook welcomes the move.

MadNad Dorries excelled herself in the drivel stakes today. Observe this post. The tone is set by the opening line, informing us that “it has not been a nice weekend.” Now, jump on board for the “Help! I’m under attack by hordes of bitter lefties, and couldn’t possibly be wrong” express which became so familiar over the course of the HFE debates…

The frenzied attack against Conservative MPs and MEPs, orchestrated by and emanating from the left wing BBC and press has equalled that of an animal in its death throes. The more terminal the position looks for Labour, the more desperate the BBC and the left wing press become.

It’s an achievement to parody oneself in an opening statement, I think. It takes true skill to take your earlier ravings about a grand conspiracy against you and twist them into something even more laughable. Apparently, the BBC, in the very act of reporting important allegations of political corruption, become biased.

And it is reportage, rather than story-breaking: Guido was the first to dish the dirt on the MEPs. And he so typifies the “left-wing bias” of the press and media, doesn’t he? Not that he doesn’t spend half of his time railing against it, not at all…

Onwards, though:

Are we all to believe that Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs and MEPs don’t make mistakes or are so different as human beings? I do not condone any misuse of allowance, however what we saw over the weekend was the equivalent of a McCarthy style witch hunt.

Again with the victim-complex, eh? You’d almost think she feared attack herself, and had something to hide…

No-one is pretending that Labour or LibDem MPs haven’t made mistakes - or lied - before. And, guess what? The media reported that too. Let’s have a look at the BBC reports on Peter Hain from earlier in the year: here and here and here and here and here and elsewhere too. That was just the coverage of his resignation, let alone the lead-up to it.

And the BBC reported other Labour funding scandals earlier this year too! Can you imagine that? They even broke their liberal programming (clearly they’re commie robots, you see…) to report on allegations of corruption against Alan Johnson, Wendy Alexander and Harriet Harman. And then there was Lord Levy - and so another story they reported of corruption in the Labour Party.

So - all clear evidence of a dastardly leftist campaign to bring down the Conservatives, by focusing for a weekend on corrupt Tories rather than Lord Levy’s memoirs? No? Well, I’m sure if you wait, Dorries will find the logic for you…

(or not…)

And it’s funny that she should mention Senator McCarthy, while we’re there. The ravingly paranoid, conservative anti-abortion Senator McCarthy, that is…

The attack against Caroline Spelman was particularly sickening.

Surely, her lying in the first place was the sickening part?

To take an MP, who ten years previously sought a meeting with the Chief Whip to query whether or not her arrangements were within the rules, which they obviously were, and then to be vilified before any inquiry has been held in the way the National Press, TV and bloggers have, has been appalling.

So - the arrangements were perfectly within the rules, which was naturally why Spelman ended them shortly after the meeting. Yes. No contradictions there. Not at all…

I note a distinct lack of counter-evidence provided by Ms. Dorries. The arrangements were “obviously” within the rules - and yet Spelman lied about them in her expenses. She hired the woman as a nanny and employed her as such. Occasionally, she answered the phone as she was around the house - so Spelman, rather than legitimately petitioning for nannies to be counted on expenses, took the short cut and put her down as a secretary instead.

So, she lied about who the nanny was. And that’s “obviously” within the rules for Dorries.

Perhaps someone should check her expenses after all…

But wait! First, Dorries wants to provide us with some top-notch, well researched evidence against the claims of her own:

As my postman said, “Ten years ago? Is this news?”

Yes, comrades. Anecdotal evidence is the correct way to respond to allegations of corruption, and not at all unreliable or possibly made up.

Am I pushing the pseudo-naive (attempts at) sarcasm a little too far, do you think?

I hope that when this is sorted, her innocence will be declared by the BBC all day long just as it declared her guilty without proof or substantial investigation on Saturday.

Wait - the testimony of the nanny doesn’t count as proof anymore? Funny, because that’s what sparked this all off…

And now it’s time for some more vague anecdotes:

The week before the vote on abortion, I was contacted by my local press to inform me that that the Labour spokesman for the area had made a complaint about my expenses to the Commissioner for standards.

The complaint was entirely inaccurate, without foundation and thrown out by the Commissioner, but that wasn’t the point. It was made in an attempt to destabilise me during the most important week of my career. Desperate left wing tactics.

Mysteriously, she hasn’t provided any solid proof for this claim. Not, of course, that it constitutes hypocrisy in the light of her demanding solid proof of the allegations against Spelman…

If the left think this kind of behaviour endears them to the public, then I think it simply serves to epitomise how out of touch they are.

If MadNad think this kind of behaviour endears her to the public, then I think it simply serves to epitomise how out of touch she is. Shallow defences of the indefensible rammed home by hypocrisy and ad hominem are just what they expect from politicians these days - along, of course, with the corruption she fails to defend.

The public can see right through this witch hunt, in a way they couldn’t see through cash for peerages.

Wait, was that an admission that the cash for peerages investigation was a witch hunt which tricked the public? I must have misread something…

The incoming Conservative government has many big dragons to slay, the BBC has to be the biggest.

No, Nadine. You’re a greater danger to the Conservative Party than the BBC. You present a challenge to the Nu-Con agitprop which paints the party as a new, socially liberal force. The BBC has never quite managed that. So, if anyone needs to be slain…

EDIT: Just seen this. Maybe she does have something to hide after all…

It seems that Sunny Hundal disagrees with my article on the likely nastiness of the presidential campaign ahead. I cannot help but be amused by the aforelinked article. In response to my claims that this should be a far more calm and pleasant race than the downright grisly 2004 contest Sunny states “No. This is going to be by far the nastiest presidential race you have ever seen and will ever see.” I think that the error made here is in presuming that anyone in America or elsewhere has the capacity to make a more effectively nasty campaign than Karl Rove. I am uncertain if Sunny is aware of this but McCain himself actually received far worse treatment during primary contests against Bush of 2000 than Gore later would in the true presidential one. There was racism used in reference to their adopted daughter and it was stated baldly that McCain’s wife was a drug addict.

Then Sunny’s post strays into the realm of parody:

McCain may give the impression of being intelligent, calm and reasonable but there’s one problem - he is a Republican. Most Republicans are scum of the earth. They are fantastic strategists but nevertheless they are scum.

Yes, those dreaded Republicans, a pack of bigots to a man, aren’t they? The problem here is that Sunny has effectively performed the crime the party criticised are most commonly guilty of. It is true that the Republicans have resulted in a bunch of truly foul policies but what is excluded from this rather feeble attempt at analysis is that McCain has actually opposed a considerable amount of the most reactionary evil generated by his own party, to the extent that he has frequently been dubbed a RINO {Republican In Name Only}.

Now this doesn’t matter too much as far as I’m concerned because he still supports Bush’s foreign policy perhaps even more fiercely than Bush does. But there are a plethora of other issues over which McCain has enraged the left; such as his creation of a bill outlawing torture, his strikingly liberal policy upon immigration, his commitment to ending global warming and drafting of legislation that prevents campaign finance being even closer to the plaything of corporate and personal interests than it is today. This has been toned down for his campaign, but still resulted in some moments that have caused apoplexy on the far-right, as I have documented.

Yet Sunny states that:

McCain himself may not say much but his surrogates and the wing-nut wing of the Republican party - the Ann Coulters, Bill O’Reillys, Sean Hannitys, Michelle Malkins of this world - are going to do anything to ensure he doesn’t become president.

Sunn is correct insofar as all of the people listed are indeed wing-nuts and would indeed love nothing more than Obama be defeated. What this does not mean is that they want to see McCain win. He is, in fact, a hate figure for Republicans for the reasons aforementioned. He is largely considered a traitor and a villain, perhaps sent mad by his treatment by the Viet Cong or senility. The racist right see him as proposing a “Shamnesty” that would allow criminals to become innocent and reckon that would allow America to be flooded with the foreign and racially impure. The neo-conservative establishment are shocked at his opposition to torture, which they have spent much of Bush’s second term defending, applying endless diminutives towards and deriding all opponents. The global warming denialists see him as a dupe. The loyalists consider him the epitome of all that is disloyal, a poster boy for treachery.

I can understand that Sunny dislikes reading the content of such writers but if this had happened even briefly the disdain which all the aforementioned authors display towards McCain would have been immediately evident.

I might direct her towards Hugh Hewitt, who at one stage called McCain amongst the most inadequate senators ever to have served. This was part of a wider campaign of thorough savaging. Lately he has toned this down but is clearly still highly uncomfortable with the set-up, spending most of his time attacking Obama and trying to avoid mention of McCain where possible. Make no mistake about this: McCain has no surrogates within the Republican establishment. Even those who he attempts to appease with his pro-life positioning consider him warily and tend to view him as the “Least worst” candidate, rather than pledging active support.

This means that although these groups may well oppose Obama {although I note that Matt Drudge, previously the impeccable rightist has been joined by Rupert Murdoch in throwing weight behind Obama, with the former even lampooning McCain along with Clinton on his highly influential site} they are by no means supporters of McCain, who’s centrism is utterly unacceptable and seemingly impossible to comprehend given their monochrome, Us & Them outlook. As it was McCain was simply filed under “Them” but at present they are mainly attacking the greater other rather than embracing the one they have been spitting about for many more years than Mr. Obama.

Unfortunately Sunny is seemingly blinded by bias:

He is Republican and I would need to change my genetic code to support or embrace a Republican…The Republicans are scum and should never be supported under any circumstance.

I would never advocate supporting McCain owing to his apparent inability to break himself from the thrall of the neo-conservatives. But to suggest that his party affiliation {which is seemingly nominal at times and he has certainly proven no loyalist to} means that this campaign will be littered with the sort of noisy nonsense that Karl Rove, the nemesis of McCain, would execute is a leap of utter irrationality.

But seemingly Sunny is wrong about everything when it comes to the state of American politics! The follow praise is heaped upon the “Netroots”:

So they have taken upon themselves to fight in the way Republicans have for decades.

when it is exactly Obama’s refusal to stoop to such lows {whatever happened to “Rise above”, Sunny?} that has characterised his campaign. He is entirely opposed to the cultural war approach favoured by the right and due to this has created his own grassroots following, that seems to operate in a far more effective fashion to Move-On et al. He uses a higher strain of politics that does not depend upon personal attack and emphasises the importance of the American people in making any progress.

Contrast, for instance, Obama’s “Yes we can” to Clinton’s “Yes she can” and you will see the superficially minor but fundamentally divisive breach between a movement initiating progressive and a top-down technocrat.

Yet Sunny states that

I continue to admire Clinton.

Clinton! She who executed the purest of Rovian, Republican tactics through a network of surrogates against a member of her own party. This is simply preposterous and I would suggest that Sunny compare McCain’s conduct to Clinton’s. Clinton & Co asked if Obama had once been a drugs dealer, suggested that the views of “White Americans” {read: racists} be considered as distinct from the rest of the working classes, implied that black primary voters somehow do not count and states with many of them are of less significance than those filled with mainly whites, compared Obama to Jesse Jackson seemingly purely on the grounds that both are black and won South Carolina, suggested that Obama was far less experienced than McCain or Clinton and had only given “One speech in 2002″, argued that he was inadequate over matters of national security as he was incapable of picking up a phone at 3AM, capitalised on the Reverend Wright scandal subtly but as effectively as possible, kept the “Obama is a Muslim” meme alive by suggesting that Obama was not a Muslim but only “As far as I know” and basically used everything you would expect of the party Sunny deems “scum”.

Meanwhile McCain has so far made a few crude attacks but unleashed no Rovian onslaught and, as I referenced in the article in question written to Obama in a tone which is so gentle and courteous that I would never have expected to witness it from a presidential frontrunner after the carnage of 2004.

This may change, of course, and it is true that the opposition from the far-right media will be partisan and vicious as ever. But McCain presents a massive challenge to these extremists, not least through being a visible victim of the methods they act as ranting apologists for. In failing to recognise this Sunny has made a truly botched analysis of American politics, supporting the elements of the Democratic Party which would lead it to further ruin and failing to realise that even a Party with as poor a history as the Republicans are not a pack of blood-thirsty demons.

This is, at first sight, and then throughout, an article of clichés.

It fails to surprise me that Peter Hitchens {a man not to be confused with his better known and far more intelligent but equally controversial brother under any circumstances} recently wrote a piece on Chavez that consisted of the crude hack-job which has proven ubiquitous on the right. His wielding of the machete is more elegant than most but still presents moments of jaw-dropping idiocy, for instance:

Revenge is already being prepared. Chavez is now demanding that the universities drop their entrance examinations so that he can pack them with young half-educated supporters who can elbow aside Geraldine and her liberty-loving friends.

he alleges, as if there is no other reason at all for such a policy being brought into place in a developing country. He does have some valid points, chiefly the worrying treatment of anti-Chavez protesters by the police. But to connect these instantly with the man himself seems unwise given that in our own nation there was an innocent man gunned down for boarding an underground train. By raising this I intend not to indicate that there are no grounds for Hitchens raising the point but rather that overly brutal policing is seemingly ubiquitous through the world {as also demonstrated by the tendency of American police to use pepper spray upon peaceful protesters until this was outlawed by court} rather than something which is a feature of any “autocracy”.

Indeed the liberal usage of the word “autocratic” is another hackneyed feature of his criticism. As ever though, evidence is thin on the ground. Hitchens, like all in his position, attempts to raise the removal of a programme highly critical of Chavez from terrestrial airwaves. Given the support that the aforesaid channel gave a violent coup staged by militant rightist forces to depose Chavez and then no coverage to the simply immense protests in the wake and in absolute action to this move I should perhaps make another comparison to Britain, this one a conjecture of fantasy. If Channel 4 had, as I personally suspect it might, given full and vocal support to a Marxist coup against Gordon Brown and then had pretended that no dissent in the country over the issue had occurred would Hitchens really imagine Brown to be acting out of bounds if he forced it to function solely as a satellite, cable and digital channel from then onwards?

Indeed, if anything it is remarkable that the network was permitted to remain on publically accessible airwaves from 2002 until over half a decade later.

Unfortunately the unoriginality is seemingly fathomless, entirely in disregard of the faded nature of over-used cards never worth much to start with. He accuses Chavez of

Plotting what was effectively a coup on the constitution

yet if it truly was one Chavez surely has learnt from past experience {both while he was planning them and when victim}. This time around rather than making a military effort to seize control he staged a referendum. Truly dastardly, isn’t it? Now if Hitchens considers the Venezuelan people to be inadequate judges of the conditions their nation faces then he should say so, but as it is he has used a highly intellectually dishonest tactic by associated the forced seizure of power to an attempt by a democratically elected president to obtain a democratic mandate upon the conditions under which Venezuela would function as a democracy.

There is an argument against this, one which does not rely upon distortion and spin. Instead Peter writes in a fashion that he is aware his American audience will respond to with a vigorous knee-jerk {despite the fact that it is highly likely a substantial number of the readers supported Bush’s attempts to amend the American one over gay marriage in what would have amounted to a far less democratic manner, had he had the 2/3s of both houses of Congress required}. What makes his failure especially galling is that in the country he tends to operate there is no written constitution at all. If he truly considers a constitution to be worthwhile and worth adhering to rigidly and making no efforts to amend I consider it peculiar that I have no recollection of him writing an article advocating we create a written document outlining the rights inalienable to us as Queen’s subjects.

Indeed the powers of Parliament are entirely unrestrained owing to the potency of Parliamentary Sovereignty, which states that no government in power may make laws incapable of being over-ridden by those that follow. Given that the executive has a vigorous grasp over self-interest {the quantity of MPs willing to oppose important bills that will lose them their current jobs in government or/and deny them any chance at future positions is not negligible but generally insubstantial} and the First Past the Post electoral system tends to ensure that there are no minority governments in parliament we are effectively left with an executive capable of doing as it pleases, with Blair only prevented from exerting his will over the country once in his ten year tenure. By no means does this mean that Hitchens’ definition of autocracy is rationally bankrupt, but I would suggest that he start raging about the shoddy state of our means of government a little more at home given how abhorrent he appears to find democratic governments having excessive power abroad.

Presumably Peter Hitchens’ concern for the liberty of the Venezuelan people and longing to protect them from themselves is greater than for his own countryman.

His intellectually insubstantial rant is in places unintentionally hilarious:

If there were any justice, Chavez would long ago have been forced from office by bankruptcy. His economic management is wasteful and sloppy and involves a great deal of expensive largesse to the poor in return for their votes,

In my piece on Pragmatic Socialism I suggested that the simple fact that it works justifies its usage where perhaps some more intellectual considerations of it do not. I think that upon some levels Hitchens accepts that Venezuela has made great progress but unfortunately he has shied away from this. He rails that it is unjust for somebody who performs the largesse of offering the basic facilities such as a solid education and healthcare along with less than extreme redistribution of wealth remain in office. This is perhaps acceptable on some ideological levels but the reality of the matter is that Chavez remains immensely and nearly overwhelmingly popular amongst the impoverished masses that make up the vast majority of Venezuela.

This is for the simple reason that he, for the first time, was a man pursuing their interests. He, for the first time, helped.

Of course, this should come with a cost. According to the doctrine of the New Right the state’s intervention into the private sector’s affairs ought to cause calamity. There is no way that it is conceivable that statist policies could improve the economic situation of a nation and even by the inadequate basis of GDP per capita {which, of course, fails to asses how much each person is worth and assumes that everyone is of equal value and thus deserves and equal amount of cash} it will bring more woe overall as the state strangles business and this throttling results in the economy falling to pieces.

Alas, for Hitchens at least, “the proportion of Venezuela’s GDP in the private sector has actually increased.”

Compounding his error Hitchens references the state of Venezuela’s

And here is the usual trite contrast, long common in the Third World and rapidly spreading to the First World—gross wealth on display next to rancid squalor. Yes, there really are hovels a few hundred feet from a freeway crammed with new SUV’s. How obvious. How stupid.

In the aforelinked article by Johann Hari it is exposed exactly how foolish this point being raised is. In South America it would be a struggle to find a government that has done more to bridge this gap than that of Chavez. The damage done by this dichotomy of wealthy and poor has been reduced considerably and how exactly the lazy claim of Chavez being “The Next Fidel” {which, to Hitchen’s defence, was a headline and thus he may well not have written} is reconciled with his claims here is beyond me. For any earnest socialist intending to “Revive socialist Marxism” would not have done so in the fashion chosen by Chavez. Firstly they would have began by executing the wealthy once they seized power, or at least enslaving them, and secondly they would certainly have seized power rather than it being politely given them by the people of Venezuela acting in a democratic fashion through what Marx considered “A committee for the organisation of the bourgeoisie”. Reformist Marxists moved away from such talk while Revolutionary Marxists most certainly did not.

Which rather brings us to our next point:

Many believe he wanted to ignore the result—he is widely accused of constant, highly scientific ballot-rigging of the kind that is very hard to prove—and was only dissuaded from doing so by a phone call from his friend Fidel Castro.

The emphasise for “Many believe” was my addition, for this form of statement permeates Hitchens’ essay. In Wikipedian terms this pattern of writing is referred to as “Weasel Words” and I consider Hitchens to be a man who would do well writing a few articles for Wikinews and seeing how they were received. Effectively he uses this phrase and its variants to avoid explaining exactly who he is talking about.

Furthermore his allegations concerning vote-rigging fall foul of what his brother Christopher considers amongst “The elementary rules of logic”, to wit: “that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” I am tempted to invoke this, but would also point out that the testament of various independent election observers {every one that has observed, in fact} combined with the fact that when it came to the referendum Chavez lost suggest against such a claim.

If he is intelligent enough to make things “Very hard to prove” he surely should be capable of making sure it works.

Venezuela ought to be an advanced and free country under the rule of law. It has plenty of educated, articulate people. It has wealth. It has most of the constituents of a serious civil society, including strong public opinion.

To conclude Hitchens is educated and articulate. He has wealth. He observes the problems facing Venezuela to which there are no short-cut solutions. But in his failure to realise that Chavez could not have established himself without the popular approval and repeated mandates given to him by the vast majority of Venezuelans he also fails to make any proper assessment of the man. Constantly seeking out negatives and seeking a totalitarian iron fist where none exists he transforms the narrative of a man offering the poor a slice of the national wealth that no other would give to them into one of a vicious autocrat scheming his way into office.

Doubtless this article was highly pleasing to its readers, who wanted their suspicions of a leftist loved by his people and doing much to help them besmirched as thoroughly as possible in order to avoid their preconceptions being challenged. I have little suspicion that it failed at this but these predictable, tiresome smears do nothing to tarnish the true success of Chavez.

I haven’t commented as yet on the Embryology Bill going through parliament at present. Dale’s take, however, pushes even MadNad’s for vacuousness.  It screams to be screamed at.

Let’s begin with:

This isn’t going to be a long post on the whys and wherefores - you can get that elsewhere, but I think anyone who writes on a public platform should say how they would vote on these issues if they had the chance.

Then why are you posting? There’s little point in expressing an opinion if you’re not going to support it in any fashion whatsoever.  I am, frankly, not interested in simply what someone thinks - I want to know why they think it.  How can you engage with a simply statement?  There’s no reasoning to go over, no debate. Nothing worth listening to.

Dale says, “You can get that elsewhere.”  He’s right.  I can.  Why should anyone bother coming to him for any of it, then?

Actually, the refusal to explain here seems more to disguise the irrationality of his objections. Observe:

On human-animal hybrid embryos I have absolutely no hesitation in saying that I would vote against them. The whole concept fills me with a slight sense of horror.

I’m sorry?  You’d vote against them because they make you feel…squaemish?  Wow.  Never mind the advances in research the human-animal hybrids could bring.  Never mind that this research could eliminate diseases which are generally assumed to make people very squaemish.  Never mind that this could actually help people.

No.  It fills you with an unexplained “sense of horror.”  It must therefore clearly be banned, because we always ban things which make us feel a little ill, no matter what good they do.

Oh look.  The House of Commons just voted against the ban.  336 to 176.

I always thought the concept of ’saviour siblings’ must be something which involved a mutual support pact involving Wendy and Douglas Alexander, but it appears not.

Droll.  Will you tell us the one about the chicken and the road next, Iain?  That’d be side-splitting enough to disguise its complete and utter irrelevance to the post.

I have slightly more sympathy and understanding of this, but there is something about it which makes me profoundly uncomfortable,

“Something?”  That’s hardly specific, and doesn’t get any more so.  Without any explanation of what that something is, surely it translates as: “I don’t know why I’m arguing this, but I have this gut feeling which flies in the face of everything tangible and rational that can be said - so I’ll go with it, naturally…”

I accept that medical advances have brought untold joy to parents who might otherwise never have conceived, and further medical advances have saved untold hundreds of thousands of lives.

So, in practical terms, you agree it’s a wonderful thing?  Yes.  And yet, and yet…

And yet, I can’t reconcile and inner belief I have that tampering with natural human science in this way is wrong. I don’t have religious beliefs, but there’s still part of me which agrees with religious teachings on this issue.

He accepts that this research does much good.  He accepts, in short, that there’s no material reason why the research should be rejected - but his own squaemishness, again.  He objects not because of the sadness or pain it might bring, but because of an, “inner feeling,” for which he provides no rational explantion.

How do you even begin to refute that?  An irrational inner feeling will remain an irrational inner feeling, with no explanation which can be targetted and dealt with.  Perhaps it’s best to keep it on a purely practical level, and ask what precisely is wrong with, “tampering with natural human science”?

Nature does not care about humanity, either way.  It is not a living entity, does not have emotions or feelings, and simply cannot care.  It is indifferent because it is unthinking.  Only we care if we live or die - and if it’s by tampering with that uncaring natural science that we do live, what’s the problem?

We would be nowhere if we didn’t.  Disease is natural - aren’t we interfering with natural human science when we take drugs to treat it?  Pregnancy is sometimes the natural consequence of unprotected sex - aren’t we interfering with natural human science with contraception?  Certain advances have only been possible through tinkering with the apparent natural state of affairs.  “Natural human science,” has yet to provide a solid reason why we shouldn’t do so.

The 20/24 week abortion debate has illustrated all that is wrong with political debate in this country. Pro-Choice supporters have railed against the 20 weekers, accusing them of being totally anti-abortion, which in some cases may be right, but certainly not all. And some of the 20 weekers have failed to recognise that there are actually arguments on the other side which need addressing.

This much is true, and a fair point.  The debate has been hijacked - by both sides.

What I do not understand is that the Conservative front bench has now put down an amendment on 22 weeks, for reasons no one has quite been able to explain. Frankly, it’s a fudge. Either you believe in the status quo, or you think the limit should be much lower. This amendment smacks too much of the lowest common denominator.

This does seem odd.  Could it be tactical?  There have been amendments tabled up and down the abortion timeframe, from 12 weeks to 22.  The idea is to get the desired change by looking like a sensible average; the 12 week limits proposed add to the illusion that change is necessary, while making the 20 week amendment look nice and liberal.  Abortion limits thus get cut without the cutters being seen as vicious anti-abortionists trying to crush women’s rights.

Now, back to the bullshit:

I unreservedly back 20 weeks and I make no bones about the fact that I would like to see it lower than that. Virtually every other European country has a limit of between 12 and 14 weeks.

Your point is?  That a law is the same in lots of places does not mean that it is right.  Virtually every other European country drives on the right side of the road - let’s switch, it makes sense by Iain’s rule.

Each law needs to be assessed by its own merits, not an international consensus.

Their abortion rates are much lower, so is the level of sexual activity among under age teenagers.

And that, of course, must be linked to lower abortion limits.  It could have nothing to do with better sex education schemes, lower ages of consent (15 in France, 14 in Germany and Italy, 13 in Spain), different cultures and attitudes (sex before marriage is, I’m told, frowned upon in most traditionally Catholic countries, and abortion even more so…) - or any one of the other factors which play a role in people in different countries getting pregnant at different rates.

Nope, it must be the high abortion limit over here.  That damned permissive society, letting those damned randy teenagers fuck and fuck and fuck like rabbits.  Give them an inch and they’ll forget their condoms!

It is a proven fact that foetuses can survive at 20 weeks - not all, but some do.

It’s also a generally accepted fact that women who abort foetuses do not want the child.  There’s a choice.  You can let a scarcely living, almost certainly non-sentient cluster of cells die - or allowing it to grow up, potentially unloved and unwanted.  Some mothers will love the foetus if it survives, yes.  But some - many, perhaps - won’t.

It’s a horrible choice, but surely it has to be made?

If you live in an area with a hospital with superb neo-natal facilities the survival rates are obviously much higher than if you live in a catchment area without one.

Absolutely correct.  But what’s your point?  That surely has more to do with the debate on postcode lotteries rather than abortion.

Finally, though, a note of reason:

It’s on occasions like this that Parliament should come into its own. Although I have reasonably unchangeable views on the abortion limit, I would genuinely like to have listened to the full debate on the other two areas before finally making up my mind. I suspect many MPs are doing just that.

At least he concludes on something we can agree on.

For a former lecturer of American and British studies at Oxford Tim Hanes truly does know startlingly little about his topic. This is the man who predicted that the Republicans would hold both Houses so firmly that he was forced to eat the article coated in tobasco after their thorough electoral humiliation. How exactly a man who seemingly knows quite so little about the shape the future will take yet {be it what would happen to Iraq after foreign soldiers took control of it or…Well…Anything at all} gets to continue to make ham-fisted attempts after so many shocking failures is beyond me.

This week he stared off with a premise as weak as it was offensive:

He [Obama] has been the General Lee of the competition so far.

Yes, mixed-race, half-black Barack Obama is much like the man who came vaguely close to protecting American slavery. Can you actually get worse than that? Yes, it seems like you can.

If he were to win the Pennsylvania primary, he would indeed become unstoppable. Yet adversity has brought out the best in Mrs Clinton. She has fought for seven weeks in Pennsylvania and while no one has been killed or wounded (unlike the 8,000 dead and near 50,000 casualties and losses at Gettysburg) it has been a bruising struggle with Mrs Clinton landing the most blows. The odds are that she will at least emerge strong enough to take her cause on further.

This analysis is, to put it lightly, shockingly poor. The only perspective from which this could be the “Best in Mrs. Clinton” is if you are either a journalist or a Republican. The former have delighted in being provided copious headlines by Clinton’s vicious mud-slinging while the latter have seen their electoral prospects soar and woefully inappropriate candidate unchallenged.

Furthermore she may have landed the most blows but this is primarily because she is the one who has been doing the most punching. Obama has started to retaliate of late, perhaps because of so many people saying that he looked like a “Wimp” after the last debate, but for the most part the month and three weeks have been an exercise in Clinton doing her best to maim her opponent, causing endless vats of rightist joy to be filled.

The chances are that Mr Obama will end the nomination season with more pledged delegates than Mrs Clinton. His admirers argue that it would be profoundly wrong for those who have not been elected as delegates to overturn the will of those who have. It’s a seductive claim, but there are good reasons why the superdelegates should ignore it and instead endorse Mrs Clinton.

Sounds dreadfully “Democratic”.

The first is, what is the point of the superdelegate system if all they do is follow the majority of pledged delegates? Why bother with them? Why not just allow them to turn up at the convention as mere observers?

Shockingly enough there is no point.

The Democratic Party created the superdelegate system about 25 years ago because it feared that the party’s most ideological supporters were quite capable of choosing a candidate who many ordinary Democrats would not feel able to back at polling stations. If the primaries and caucuses were to be the gearbox of the nominating procedure, then the superdelegates were designed to serve as the handbrake. That is their role.

Yes, the elite knows best. Let us place our trust in the establishment. The wishes of the party who actually showed up to vote are an irrelevance.

Secondly, any advantage that Mr Obama will have among pledged delegates is misleading. Not only will Mrs Clinton have won in most of the largest states but she will probably have secured the bulk of delegates won in primaries - where turnout is comparatively high, while he has romped home in the caucuses - where participation is notoriously feeble.

It is here that Hanes exposes his blundering ignorance. He would have half a leg to stand on if he was actually correct in his claim concerning the number of Democrats which have voted for which. This is being measured and is known, predictably enough, as the “Popular Vote”.

At present Obama is thrashing her there, too.

That noise is the debris of Hanes’ argument hitting a hard surface as his case falls to pieces like a house of cards encountering a falling brick.

Furthermore, if all the superdelegates were compelled to vote for the person who won the most votes in their state (which they should not be, but it is an interesting exercise), then Mrs Clinton, who is likely to end the season having triumphed in eight of the most populous ten states (including Florida and Michigan, which had their results discounted by the Democratic National Committee as punishment for scheduling their primaries too early), would benefit hugely.

Because, of course, a vote where neither candidate campaigned is perfectly justifiably claimed as one in which she “Triumphed”, as is one where the named “Obama” was not even to be accepted as a write-in candidate let alone to be found on the ballot. Hanes’ partisanship is quite bewildering to behold. Either that or it is a level of ignorance that would be yet more shocking. I am highly thankful that I never endured him as a lecturer.

Finally, enough is now known about the strengths and weaknesses of these two contenders for superdelegates to come to the following conclusion. Mrs Clinton is the 5347 option and Mr Obama is the 5542 one. By this I mean that it is tough to imagine her obtaining more than 53 per cent of the national vote against John McCain, but it is hard to envisage her falling below 47 per cent either.

Given that half of Americans have stated that they would not vote for her under any circumstances I think that it is safe to say that it is impossible to imagine her winning at all.

Most of those Democrats who prefer Mr Obama to her (African-Americans, affluent whites, the young) would nevertheless back the New York senator in November

This is where Hanes becomes simply tiresome in his disconnection to America. I have visited chat-rooms, read blogs and talked to friends over AIM but not actually been there since I was still in the womb so perhaps the same is true of me. But there is one message unmistakable: Hillary will not be getting the black votes she lost back. Not since all that carnage. If she wins the nomination the people disgusted with her actions and “Fairytale” and “So did Jesse Jackson” remark of her husband will not flock back to her. Neither will the “Obamaniacs”, who loathe her. Neither will the MoveOn.orgers, who she lied about and lost forever when she backed the war.

They will simply not be there.

(particularly if their man was in the vice-presidential slot)

Yeah, he actually won the election through popular vote and through delegates but he’s certain to settle for that. I fear I see the specter of race hovering here, or at least opposition to youth {not that Obama truly is one} but as neither are mentioned explicitly I will not speculate.

Mr Obama, by contrast, has a somewhat higher vote ceiling but a much lower floor to his vote. If Americans decide that they are desperate for “change”, pure and simple, then he is a better vehicle for that mood than a woman who has the history of the 1990s attached to her.

Americans are pretty clearly in favour of that, as demonstrated by the theft of Obama’s buzzword by Hillary.

If, though, voters are after “change (with reassurance)”, as one suspects is the case, then she is a smarter bet against Mr McCain. A sizeable slice of working-class Democrats who back her may switch to the Arizona Senator if she loses. In the worst-case scenario, the Republican champion may well wipe the floor with Mr Obama.

Yes, nothing like a man who wants to stay in Iraq for as long as it takes to “Win” {whatever that means} to offer “reassurance”. No match exists for a man who is not only incapable of understanding the economy at present but also seemingly devoid of much interest to do so in the future. The working-classes are bound to move towards a man who proposes their families continue to die in Iraq and suggests that they get no assistance after having their lives ruined by corporate lies.

Iraq is, of course, the unspoken issue here. I suspect that Hanes prefers Hillary for much the same reason the right does: they know that she is incapable of removing troops and they are wary of someone who had enough foresight to show them up long, long ago, while they were still crying out that it would be the seamless toppling of a tyrant followed by liberal democracy reigning and free civil liberties being distributed evenly to all by a crack-squad of friendly, benevolent GIs.

Obama is deeply challenging to those who were fooled quite so thoroughly in a way that a fellow victim {Clinton does at least care about the political aftermath, which she did not foresee} never can. Clinton will never gain the political leverage necessary to extricate America and this is an out-come that the unrepentant neo-cons and their blushing apologists find favourable. The rest suggest that we should abandon the White Man’s Burden, an act of heinous dereliction.

Assuming she is victorious in Pennsylvania, then Mrs Clinton should keep on running. The superdelegates must ask themselves not only “who can win?” but “how might they lose?” For the reality of Gettysburg is not that in pure military terms the North actually won, but that it did not lose. It was this that later made it such a decisive moment.

If the superdelegates wish to destroy the relationship of an entire generation with their party and have a burning desire to lose an election that a one-eyed monkey with mange could triumph against the Republican Party with then they should unquestionably override the wishes of those they supposedly represent and force Clinton into position. This would result in a rupture within the party and the ultimate in culture war elections: Vietnam vet who reckons America should have stayed in and reckons they should stay in now against technocratic liberal of the elite and of the establishment. A speech at Wellesley versus years being tortured by the Viet Cong.

More dire baby-boomer drama, in other words.

Gerard Baker really is a lousy American correspondent.

Why? Because he understands half of America fine. Really well, in fact. There are better but he does an immensely decent job at reporting the right side, he has quite a feel for them and although he occasionally gets carried away {see: ham-fisted jingoism when it mattered} he actually seems to know nothing at all about the other side of America, about the left.

This article today simply confirmed it.

It dubbed Obama a “Dangerous Leftwinger” in a fashion that was positively McCarthian in the headline and then got worse from there:

He began with a jab at Obama’s wife, attempting to stage a critique-via-proxy to mask his real offensive on her husband, stating:

In what might be the most revealing statement made by any political figure so far in this campaign season…

in reference towards her views on America and pride. Apparently John McCain’s infamous “Iraq for 10,000 years” is effectively negligible. He then acted as the Thought Police and stated that she had a “remarkably narrow view”. I suspect that it was simply her breadth allowing her to note all of the atrocities that he acted as an apologist for.

He then proceeded to tout the moronic “Messianic” line, when Obama’s speeches have always told the American People that it would be a collective effort {perhaps something that Baker has trouble understanding} and been far from technocratic.

But then the idiocy gets further:

Secondly, and more importantly, I suspect it reveals much about what the Obama family really thinks about the kind of nation that America is.

It seems that Baker, although encouraging us to listen to Obama’s speeches has really never done so himself. Obama’s passion for America is blatant and only somebody lacking both internal ears and eyeballs could fail to observe it. Her view is her view, she will not be president. Barack’s is obvious.

He attempts to get around this by saying that he is on the “Wing” of the party that hates America {since obviously trying to get a country’s children educated and attended to by doctors is the signature for somebody who loathes it} but it here that Baker is worst of all.

I have observed a phenomenon amongst American correspondents that I dub the “Defensive Snarl”, usually accompanied by its applied aural form the “Hypocrite’s slur”. America is the target of a good deal of leftist bile and those who are in America tend to enjoy at least some element of their existence. Accordingly their tendency is to smear all of these critics as ferociously I can, in the most disingeious approach imaginable.

Calling all Americans “A bunch of bigots” is immensely ironic. Calling all critics of America those that call all Americans “A bunch of bigots” greater still.

Observe:

There is a caste of left-wing Americans who wish essentially and in all honesty that their country was much more like France.

I am almost in tears by this stage.

They wish it had much higher levels of taxation and government intervention, that it had much higher levels of welfare, that it did not have such a “militaristic” approach to foreign policy.

Yes, they do. Note the way that the use of ” ” to enclose the word militaristic. Why are they there? Presumably Gerard considers the USA’s foreign policy to be other than militaristic, and wants to let us know that he does not endorse such crazy traitor-talk as alleged that a President waddling around in an airforce jump-suit and beginning and then sustaining wars that cause a deranged amount of damage to entirely innocent people is something other than militaristic.

If that is his view then he should damn well say so and write a proper article explaining this idiocy.

But this has never been Baker’s style.  He prefers to keep himself in a rush, thinking that so long as he keeps on churning out the nonsense he can excuse not backing a word of it up.

Above all, that its national goals were dictated, not by the dreadful halfwits who inhabit godforsaken places like Kansas and Mississippi, but by the counsels of the United Nations.

This is the part where I began to imagine that Baker’s understanding of leftism and its priorities consisted of reading a few Those T-shirts and setting finger to key while still chuckling. I’ve read a good deal of leftist material over the past few years, much of it originating from America, and the one argument that I have not seen is the case for the UN taking over US foreign policy.

I am shocked that I have seen no blog, article or website promoting this cause if it really is as prominent a thing that we lefties covet. Strangely the impression that I got was that what the American Left really wanted was an end to torture, an end to the absurdity of an industrialised nation in the 21st century having citizens dying for want of healthcare or, oh, an end to the War?

This supports my long-held view that Baker really has no idea who the left are and what they believe in and as such his articles on them are bound to be that of a blind-man staggering about and bumping into things. Obviously he never reads any of their output since he has failed to note that the left really barely ever talks about the UN any more, perhaps because it now seems like the majority of Americans are coming around to its stance on the War. The American people, just like the majority of the American left always has, wants the troops out and wants it now. That’s what is spoken about, not the UN. Why would that be advocated when it looks like a President who agrees with them stands a strong {perhaps the strongest} of getting elected?

Ah, but what a fool I was to imagine that Baker would leave that uncovered:

He continues to insist, despite the growing evidence that this left-wing nostrum would be lunacy, that the US must pull its troops out of Iraq with the utmost dispatch.

Yes, nevermind the growth of actual Americans of the view that we need to leave, the lack of consensus towards remaining embedded in a country where we are causing damage to all democrats by associating western values with the presence of a unwanted military force is no concern for dear Gerard, for he can simply generate one from his mind’s never-ending fantastical capacity.

It is “Lunacy” to depart from a country that does not want us, where we are confined to a fortress city-within-a-city euphemistically termed “The Green Zone” to contrast it to the colour the streets turn whenever American soldiers try and travel anywhere else. Utterly absurd, of course. What could Barack be thinking? It is so beyond the pale, so in opposition to the almighty empirical data that I allude to but never cite, that we must not address his actual argument. Far better to dismiss him off hand, far better to use this as fodder for further idiocy.

Let the Fisking continue:

There was no shortage of proposals. He plans large increases in government spending on health and education.

As did Bush and as Bush did. If Baker is arguing that this is somehow still an approach advocated solely by the far left he has clearly not even heard of Huckabee, let alone noted that there is a candidate suggesting we shrink the state, Ron Paul, and that he has rarely received the support of more than 10% of Republican voters, often much less.

And we would have to overlook the trillions of dollars spent by Bush {indeed, the billions he has taken from China in order to stage Baker’s beloved war} as well. Of course.

He wants to tax the rich more to pay for it. He is against companies using the opportunities of free markets to restructure their operations in the US. He is vehemently protectionist.

These are policies of the left. However Baker is wrong in that he botches his follow through:

 when you cut through the verbiage there is nothing to suggest he believes anything that is seriously at odds with the far Left of his party.

Where he is utterly wrong.

Firstly he seems to have conflated verbiage with eloquence, when they are two clearly distinct concepts. When eloquent you say something with the same clarity but superior aesthetics to the most basic form that meaning could be gleaned from, while with verbiage the meaning is obscured by unnecessary clutter.

Baker is also wrong in that the left is actually considerably wary of Obama. He is barely distinct from Hillary but where he is it is to the right. The choice of the left would have been Edwards, by a merry mile, but in his stead they balked from Clinton owing largely to her blatant lack of integrity and ruthless opportunism. Obama is clearly a winner and the left are rather keen on enjoying a spot of that, since it really has been quite a while.

In a sentence less cloying than nauseating, he continues:

If you think about it for a second, it’s not really an accident that he has been endorsed by the likes of Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.

Which makes it a mystery how he had such an easy time carrying all of the Red States, does it not? A total enigma, given that he is really a being of the hard-left.

Hang on though, I haven’t thought for a second…

Alright.

A second’s thought leads me to conclude that Obama is a centrist.

Though he talks with great eloquence about the future, he sounds for all the world like one of the long line of Democrats from George McGovern to Walter Mondale to Michael Dukakis, who became history by espousing policies and striking a rhetorical pose that was well out of the mainstream of American politics.

The absurdity of Obama being at all like McGovern, Mondale or Dukakis is just one that I am going to disregard entirely. I would feel defiled even debating that point.

Note, however, that he thinks that his perception is “For all the world”. Baker lives in his own fantastical planet, this much is clear, one with it’s own Iraq, not to mention its own America where the “Ordinary” American is in favour of remaining engaged within the aforementioned fantasy Iraq {and why not? It sounds like such a nice place} and now, it seems, Obama’s talk of working with Republicans, his strictly limited {but still utterly shocking to almost all leftists} praise of Reagen and his flanking of Hillary over healthcare from the Right simply never occurred.

This is a fantasy world where amongst the “real causes for American pride in the past 25 years” is “the victory in the first Gulf War in 1991″, where Suddam was left to slaughter the Kurdish rebels rising against him at his own leisure with helicopter gunships and other weaponry bought by the US as GIs stood by and did not even blast those airborne artillery batteries flying through their no-fly zone. A true triumph, that was.

This is a world where when an American sees an American will

fill up with understandable emotion whenever they see a report on television about the tragic heroics of some soldier or Marine who gave his life in Iraq or Afghanistan.

and amongst those feelings will not be blood-curdling rage at the pointless death of someone killed for no cause at all or remorse that this absurd spectacle of aimless carnage had been permitted to continue.

I could caustically rant on for hours about this fool and his distorted vision of an already warped country that deserves far more hatred than its earned yet at times seems defended solely by the blind to the bloodstains rather than those who can accept the horrors it has committed yet do not consider it the Great Satan but this commenteer on the Times website has already done my job for me:

What you claim as the “mainstream of American politics” is neither mainstream nor American. You are simply expressing the age old fear of the status quo, a fear of loosing the lucrative control the status quo has over Americans….You are afraid of Obama and what he stands for and frankly you should be.